now, admittedly, it was a bad environment. single-parent home, you know, my mother and father had gotten divorced early on. my mother got married when she was 13. she was one of 24 children. had a horrible life. discovered that her husband was a bigamist, had another family. and she only had a third grade education. she had to take care of us. dire poverty. i had a horrible temper, poor self-esteem. all the things that you think would preclude success. but i had something very important, i had a mother who believed in me, and i had a mother who would never allow herself to be a victim no matter what happened. never made excuses, and she never accepted an excuse from us. and if we ever came up with an excuse, she always said do you have a brain? and if the answer was, yes, then she said then you could have thought your way out of it. it doesn't matter what john or susan or mary or anybody else did or said. and it was the most important thing she did for my brother and myself. because if you don't accept excuse, pretty soon peop